The introduction of a product into a production environment or the marketplace may be accompanied by technical difficulties that are addressed during the life of the product. These technical difficulties may include, for example, problems associated with an incorrect production process, a poor material selection, an improper design choice, an application oversight, or other such technical difficulties. The number and magnitude of technical difficulties may directly affect the amount of warranty dollars spent by a manufacturer to correct the technical difficulties after production has begun and may factor into the profit margin associated with the product. If the technical difficulties can be predicted before the product is available to the end customer, it may be possible to reduce the likelihood or severity of the technical difficulties and the associated warranty costs.
One method that has been developed for predicting reliability is described in U.S. Patent Publication No. 2003/0171897 (the '897 publication) of Bieda et al printed on Sep. 11, 2003. The '897 publication describes a method that includes the collection of product performance data, the determination of the failure mode of detected product failures, and the completion of a Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA). The FMEA is used to determine a severity and a frequency of occurrence of the failure. The severity and frequency are then ranked with different ranking values. An initial risk assessment of each failure is calculated as the product of the ranked severity value and the selected ranked frequency of occurrence of the failure. Failures exceeding a threshold preliminary risk assessment are subject to a root cause product failure analysis. A corrective action for the root cause of failure is then determined, and a final risk assessment for each corrective action is generated.
Although the system of the '897 publication may help in determining already-occurring failures and the associated severity of the failures, it may do little to predict failures in a future product before the product reaches the marketplace. In particular, because the system of the '897 publication uses current product data to generate corrective actions applicable to the current product, it may be inapplicable to a future product that has not yet experienced failure.
Further, the system of the '897 publication may lack calibration. In particular, because the severity, frequency of occurrence, and risk assessment values are not correlated to actual historical trends, there is no way to ensure the accuracy or repeatability of the prediction method. Similarly, the system of the '897 publication does not use historical data to predict warranty costs associated with predicted reliability and quality.
The method of the present disclosure is directed towards overcoming one or more of the problems as set forth above.